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“
Clear!
” one of the men shouted.
 

“
Clear!
” another echoed.
 

“
Clear!
”
 

The room quieted. Trevor didn’t dare move. He was under the distinct impression that although he could see little, the invaders could see everything.

Night vision goggles,
his mind told him.
 

But who wore night vision goggles? Who brought generators and powered drills to an apocalypse bunker, scavenging for scraps?
 

Military maybe? A special-ops team gone rogue?

It was as if the group had come here specifically to take the bunker. As if they’d known exactly what would be required … and, curiously, how to take over without killing a soul. Not a shot had been fired after the first man, squatting low, had killed the lights.
 

A new set of footsteps paced casually down from above then moved to the middle of the now-quiet room.

“Get a light.”

The voice chilled Trevor’s spine. The newcomer who’d said those words spoke like someone giving a lecture, not someone who’d spent less than a minute masterminding a flawless raid. The man had a slight accent, but rather than it making him sound distinguished to Trevor’s ears, it made him sound somehow broken.
 

A lantern lit. Trevor recognized it as the one Piper kept in the middle of the coffee table “just in case.” The glow was weak for the large room, but enough for Trevor to see the raiders.
 

There were six of them. The man who’d spoken last was in the center, wearing a black overcoat, newly arrived only after the dirty shooting work had been completed. Trevor watched all six men remove night vision goggles, his heart pounding. His eyes caught Lila, with their mother, to one side, staring at the lead man in abject horror. As if she recognized him and sensed something horrible seconds away.

“Well then,” the tall man said. “What a fine little place you have here.”
 

The man was roughly in the room’s center, a few feet from the lantern. His proximity to the only light source threw a huge shadow opposite, across Raj, who’d been knocked to the ground, guarded by a thick-looking man with curly hair and bad skin. Heather and Lila were clasping each other nearby.
 

Piper was still at the control room door, but now her arm was held fast by the big black man who’d shot out the lights. She looked frail and beautiful, out of place amid this violence. She looked at Trevor, seeming suddenly helpless. All the strength she’d gained over the past months had vanished in an instant, stolen by this band of marauders.
 

Trevor gave Piper a blinking nod that he hoped seemed reassuring. He looked around at the others, seeing how completely and easily they’d taken the bunker. The man above Raj was holding Raj’s gun. The others trained handguns around the room — casually, as if they thought their prisoners offered no threat.
 

“What do you want?” Trevor tried to puff himself up despite his position on the floor.
 

The man looked down, surprised. Piper was tossing Trevor glances with a clear meaning:
Shut up, and play dead
.
 

But Trevor had shut up and played dead enough. He’d let his father save them from the bad men who’d occupied the house when they’d arrived. He’d got himself nabbed by Garth and had to be rescued by
Piper
of all people — the woman he had regular daydreams and normal dreams about saving. He’d spent many hours over the past months thinking about Piper. They were flights of fancy he’d never act upon, but the facts were clear:
her man was gone, she was lonely and sad, and there was only one unencumbered male left in their corner of the world.
 

“I should think what I want would be obvious,” said the tall man, his slight accent unplaceable. He paced, looking into each of the bunker’s rooms. “Not a bad place to hide, is it? And anyone who’d build such a place, we’d guessed, would have plenty of goodies to share.” He reached the armory’s open door and peered inside. He turned back and spoke again, sounding genuinely shocked. “
Many
goodies.”

“This place is
ours
,” Trevor said.
 

The tall man jerked his head at the man above Trevor. “Allow him to stand.” Then, to Trevor: “What’s your name, son?”
 

“Trevor.”
 

“I’m Morgan.” He smiled then pointed around at the others as if they were at a tea party. “This is Dan, Vincent, and Christopher. Terrence is the other, around here somewhere. Were you the one who shot at us, coming in?”
 

Trevor swallowed. Morgan’s full attention was like being X-rayed. He nodded, trying to hide his nervousness.
 

Morgan nodded back. He looked at Raj, still on the floor, not trying to stand tall. “I guess it wasn’t this one, eh?” He looked at Piper and smiled in a way that Trevor
definitely
didn’t like. “And not that one either, though that would have been … interesting.” He turned back to Trevor, reached into the small of his back, and pulled out a semiautomatic pistol. To Trevor, it looked like a cop’s.

“Then if you
are
the man in charge, I have a question for you: In my shoes, what would you
do
with a young man who declared himself in charge — and tried, even, to kill your team?”
 

The man watched Trevor. His gaze was intense, his eyes a haunting shade of green.
 

“I don’t know,” Trevor said.
 

Morgan smirked. “Indecision is the worst trait a leader can have.” Then he leaned in and whispered, “You must always cut off a group’s head if you want the body to follow.”
 

Trevor thought to ask what that meant, but before he could Morgan rolled the gun in his grip, turning the butt to face Trevor.
 

Morgan struck him very hard. Trevor thought he felt something shift and break in his nose, but there was no time to think before consciousness was gone and his unprotesting body fell to the floor.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Morgan watched the boy collapse. Then he let the two women — one older and one younger, both pretty — go to him. Once they had gone, four eyes glared up as Morgan slipped the gun back into his belt. He looked away from their stares, uncaring.

Lights flicked on overhead. Morgan blinked up, pleased with Terrence’s timing.
 

“Let me explain how this will work,” he said, looking around at the group. “This is
my
home now. It seems you can accommodate guests, given all your space and supplies. We had a rough time getting in, so I feel we’ve earned our welcome. But we have a problem.”
 

The younger of the women — the one with brown hair — stood from her crouch and came toward Morgan.

“You win,” she said. “Just let us go.”
 

“Well, that’s the problem. For one, the kind part of me doesn’t
want
you to go out there, for your own good. The lawn is full of hippie campers who will drag you into sing-alongs. Beyond that, there are alien ships in the skies. Not here now, but there’s no way of knowing when they’ll return.”
 

“‘
Return
’
?
” said the woman.
 

“You don’t know?” Morgan laughed. “You’ve been visited. I’ve heard many stories. That’s the reason these people are here: ships have come, and they want to be taken along for the next joyride if they ever come again.”
 

The women exchanged looks. Not far away, the teenage girl — possibly the daughter of the other; they looked alike — stared at Morgan with the breed of terrified awe that always made him feel happy to see.
 

“But if I just toss you out,” Morgan went on, “those ships might come back. They might take more of you.”
 

The woman blinked. After a moment, she hesitantly asked, “What do you mean, More of us?”
 

Morgan looked at Cameron.
 

“She doesn’t know,” Cameron said.
 

Morgan studied the woman. “You
must
know. Who
was
he? Your father?”
 

“Who was
who?
” She looked baffled.
 

They couldn’t be this clueless; they must know that one of their own had been taken.

“The man who was taken.”
 

She swallowed. “He’s my husband.”
 

“
Him?
With
you?
” Morgan laughed. The hippies outside had shown them pictures when they’d still been pretending to be friendly, and the abducted man had been much older than this exotic flower. He sighed. “Well, it is what it is.”

“What’s his name?” the woman asked. “The man you’re talking about?”
 

Morgan looked at Cameron. He didn’t remember. Cameron knew a lot about the abducted, being a stone’s throw from a UFO freak himself. Morgan didn’t care. There had been a crowd here, and crowds meant opportunity. They’d learned of the bunker, and from that point on their needs had become clear. Beyond that, he could care less whose property they’d just seized or what had become of him.

Cameron’s eyes ticked up. Was he nervous? The situation was under control. Morgan turned to see Christopher behind him, but the boy had no answers either.
 

“Meyer Dempsey,” Cameron said. “
The
Meyer Dempsey.”
 

The dark-haired woman stood. “Do you know who
I
am?”
 

Cameron paused then nodded when Morgan’s eyes gave him a go-ahead. What did Morgan care? Cameron and Dan had studied this place, but guns and drills were all the research Morgan really needed.
 

“You’re Heather Hawthorne.”

“
How
do you know me?”
 

“Everyone knows you.”
 

The brown-haired woman spoke up again, looking at Cameron. “What makes you say Meyer was taken? It wasn’t on the news that we saw. Or the Internet, before ours went out. So how—?”
 

“Word gets around.” Cameron’s eyes flicked to Morgan then again to Christopher. Why did he seem so nervous? Nobody here cared how Cameron had come upon his information. They were much more frightened about being killed. Justifiably so, Morgan thought.

“But your fame does raise a problem,” Morgan said. “Because people
do
know you. A few of you anyway. We kick you into the crowd, they might go to you even if you’re good little boys and girls — ” Morgan looked around the group, “ — and say nothing to them about us and what happened here after our drill went silent and we vanished into a closet.”
 

He looked up at the sound of Terrence descending the stairs.
 

“
This
fellow — ” he pointed at Terrence, speaking to the woman, “ — can lock us back in. I’m not worried about others trying to get inside. They left us alone while we were up there, and they’ll definitely leave us alone down here. And, as I said, that’s assuming they know what we did or where we went. They may think we were just breaking into a safe — an impression we intend to drive home later, when we walk out in plain sight hauling goods … then sneak back after dark. With luck, we’ll be able to hide down here as you have, mostly unseen, no matter how many new pilgrims follow the stars or the spiritual energy or whatever and tromp all over our new lawn above.”
 

He nodded toward the young woman, annoyed that Cameron hadn’t provided her name.
 

“But you, Mrs. Dempsey,” he said, compromising. “And
you
, Ms. Hawthorne.
You
might tell on us. And worse — because you are known and maybe even famous, certain authorities might listen if
you
show up and start talking.”
 

Heather shook her head. “We won’t tell anyone you’re here.”
 

Morgan shrugged, resettling his overcoat. This had always been the most unpleasant part of this endeavor. You could
take
something easily. You could even — if you had trained men like Vincent and Dan — take what you wanted without making a mess or unnecessary noise. But it was harder to settle in and play house with what you’d taken without trimming loose ends.
 

“I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “You’re too big a liability to let go.”
 

The younger woman shifted nervously, seeming to weigh her chances. Morgan was struck by her beauty. She had poise beyond her years — some haunting shadow that lurked behind her eyes. Something that gave her edges where a simpler woman would have none. She looked almost wild enough to try something rash, but the other men still had their guns ready, the two boys were clearly still out of commission, and the famous woman and her probable daughter looked too frightened to even think. But not this woman.
 

“Let the others go,” she said.
 

Morgan blinked. “Maybe you didn’t hear me.”